Cambridge Engineering Society Easter · May 2020
The Phoenix Partnership From the Editor Celebrating Women in CUED -International Women's Day
THE CAMBRIDGE ENGINEER
Photo by Zichuan Han from Pexels
From the Editor
It has been great to work for CUES as the magazine editor, and I genuinely appreciate having been given this opportunity. I would like to share some of my thoughts regarding the last two years of my magazine editing work.
Tostart with, I thought it could be a good excuse to temporarily put my engineering work aside and to practice my design skills. I exaggerated a bit when doing the magazine interview to successfully get the role. I only knew the basics of Photoshop, so I secretly panicked a bit when starting. I talked to the previous magazine editor for bits of advice after reading the handover documents. I was recommended to follow a specific template, but I decided to break the rules and be creative. It is sometimes a bit risky to break convention but if you are determined, you can amaze yourself. It took me 2 weeks to learn the basics of InDesign and to get a few magazine samples for design references.
Gradually I grasped the way to imitate the design patterns of sample magazine pages and adapted them to fit the CUES topics, so I am sure now our magazines look more artistic. However, sometimes my passion went too far; one professional content designer once complained that my ‘artistic’ text wrapping was ugly. Being aware that I was representing CUES, I corrected my design to be more rigorous-looking for future versions.
Toenrich the content, I contacted researchers in the department for article contributions, included some grant articles and initiated article competitions. It is quite interesting to read through those articles, and it is a good networking opportunity. Unlike reading articles from normal magazines or newspapers, when you spend time collecting the content and try to frame it with pretty designs, you resonate with it more and the core idea stays longer. Once I obtained an article from a researcher depicting a game that he designed for electrical engineering education; I deeply felt how passionate he was and I couldn’t wait to share
his work around. I don’t know whether it is politically correct or not but being a Cambridge student makes me more aware of the ideas created by people working or studying in Cambridge. When it is your mission to disseminate those ideas, your comprehension levels go up.
Inaddition, after discussing with team members, I decided to
include a puzzle page and an interview panel. I interviewed my DoS, also the Dyson centre manager, Dr Richard Roebuck for and recorded his response on the third magazine issue that I made (Easter Edition 2019). It took many pages to cover the story. I still remember how he humbly depicted the fact that he became a DoS as a PhD (student) before obtaining the “Doctor” title. With great minds like Dr Roebuck around us, I feel ashamed that I procrastinated the menial tasks and avoided putting all my energy for more important assignments. The more you give up before achieving perfection, the farther you become from leading a fulfilled life. It is a regret that I only did the interview once and have forgone the opportunity to learn more about other great minds in this way.
Overthe last two years as the magazine editor, I have developed a complex feeling towards this role. I feel that have created some values for the magazine, but I might have not achieved the best result. If you rate my magazine quality with the standard rating method for Cambridge exams, I am probably just above 2.1. It is quite far from the first honour. The saddest thing is not that you did not achieve the best, but that you could have. This passage is mainly for self-reflection. I will really appreciate it if you have followed me to this line. From now on, I will always remind myself: if you decide to undertake a task but you don’t put your mind onto it, you are risking whiling your life away. I hope you, who are reading it now, can also do whatever you undertake with all your might and passion. ♦ - Lettice (Lai) Wei
Celebrating Women in CUED
International Women’s Day
Here at CUES, we love celebrating the amazing people in the department! For International Women’s Day 2020, we collected some shout -outs of amazing women in CUED who inspire us! Here are some of the responses:
As many of you know, Maria is our amazing Departmental Outreach Officer who also puts on an amazing programme of events to get more people into engineering!
Shout out to Maria Kettle for changing the world into a fairer place and for bringing so much positivity and advice into my life!
Areeg is CUES’ very own Access Officer (the first ever!) and there isn’t a person in CUED who knows her and doesn’t love her ! –Thanks for all you do!
Areeg, all I want to know is how you do it? How are you so constantly amazing?
Emma Findlay, a PhD student in Electrical Engineering, is one of the most well known and loved supervisors who has helped so many students understand the crazy world of MOSFETs.
To Emma F, the craziest thing is that no matter how good of a supervisor I think you are, I will find someone who also had you as a supervisor and appreciates you even more! You've really helped a lot of us wrap our heads around electrical engineering.
Besides keeping on top of the Teaching Office emails, Mary is one of the most amazing people you could ever meet! Always up for a chat and a laugh!
Shoutout to Mary Wilby for being a rock of support and happiness in the lives of so many!
Kirsten, is the administrator of the UseLess Research Group who keeps the group running as well as manages some of the additional projects they do such as the 88Pianists project!
To Kirsten S, you're amazing and honestly keep us going!
Cassi and Lucia are post -graduate students at the CEB and the IfM respectively and have also been amazing mentors to student teams.
To Cassi ad Lucia, thank you for being such amazing mentors for us during our project!
The amazing team of librarians are always there for us during any research/academic crisis and also just to have a chat and we love them for it!
To the ladies in the library, thank you so much for your never -ending patience and willingness to help me navigate the world of academia and referencing.
Megan is a researcher in environmental fluid mechanics and also the lead of the Department’s Athena SWAN team which works towards the advancement of gender equality in research.
To Megan, thank you for being such an amazing advocate for Women in Engineering and a fantastic lead of Athena SWAN!
I'm sure we all know the wonderful team of ladies in the reception who are always a friendly face to help us with our questions and problems! Lili, Joanna, Sara and Jane, this goes out to you.
The wonderful ladies at reception who are always eager to help students in any way they can and are just so lovely all the time! We love seeing you excited about our projects just as much as we are! x
Shout to some of our amazing undergraduate peers (and friends) who inspire us everyday with their dedication, resilience and bubbly personalities!
Priyanka Patel of Pembroke! She is amazing in every way! Possibly the most resilient and hard working person I have ever met xox
Shout out to my college wife Nikita. An absolute queen who does everything and always wants to help people. Keep going xx
And last, but certainly not least – Claire Barlow – who served as the interim Head of Department in 2018; we are grateful for all the work you put in behind the scenes to make the Department run smoothly.
To Claire Barlow, thank you for all you do for the department!
Dr Barlow said this in response: “It’s a great privilege to work with so many wonderful students in the Engineering Department: thank you for all your help and support!”
Cassie - you are a massive ray of sunshine. Thank you for always getting involved and helping out.
STARTING SALARY:
£45,000
ROLES INCLUDE:
• Software Developer
• Graduate Analyst
• Communications Manager
• Account Manager
• Technical Operations
TPP
is a global digital health company. With over 6,000 organisations using our solutions to care for over 50 million patients, our software is used across all health and social care settings, including GPs, emergency departments, hospitals and mental health services. This means that wherever and whenever a patient needs care, a detailed and up-to-date record is available. No other company has a digital healthcare solution on this scale. Our database is one of the largest in the world. It processes a billion transactions daily – more than the London Stock Exchange and Visa combined.
Our technology helps improve people’s lives across the world, whether it is scheduling immunisations for millions of chil-
dren, allowing doctors to manage complex care for elderly patients, helping governments with the prevention of outbreaks, or developing new machine learning algorithms for the early diagnosis of disease.
TPP is committed to helping tackle global health challenges, working with governments to deliver the technology required for the future of healthcare.
We value natural ability, enthusiasm and the potential to learn over direct work experience. As well as a great job, we will provide you with an excellent starting salary, fantastic benefits, and outstanding annual pay reviews.
IstudiedPhysics at Trinity College, Cambridge, where I’d had chance to do a little bit of coding and really enjoyed it. I applied at TPP as they offered a Software Developer role, with no experience required, and the description seemed to fit everything I was looking for in a career – challenging, with new things to learn.
In some ways, working at TPP is a bit like studying for your degree – you’re still solving interesting problems every day. The biggest distinction is that the things I’m working on are really relevant to real life and real people and
it’s immediately obvious that the work that I’ve done affects how doctors work. For example, I’ve worked on cutting-edge machine learning techniques, including developing an AI assistant to help doctors diagnose ovarian cancer. The other main difference is that work is much more structured – which means I can go home at 5.15pm every day and spend all evening (and all weekend) not thinking about work at all.
Withall this free time, I’ve been able to join a friendly local running club where I get to explore the Yorkshire countryside. I’ve also started climbing with some friends from work – there are three indoor walls within a 15 minute drive and plenty of opportunities for climbing outdoors too!
Istudied
Engineering at Cambridge, and started at TPP straight after graduating. I really enjoy
coding, so I decided to look for jobs in software development.
TPP
stood out to me in my job search because it wasn’t just about making software, but making software that had a huge impact on people’s lives.
Working
at TPP actually feels more relaxed than university. Because of the way uni was structured, I never really had “time off”, as I had to carry on studying even through the holidays. At TPP, there’s no pressure to continue
working past the closing time, and we are not allowed to take work home. This means that you can spend the day being focused on working efficiently, and then truly have the evenings and weekends off. Also, even though the company is split into lots of little teams, it still feels like one big team – we all help each other and are accountable to each other.
Sincejoining TPP, I have worked on a number of projects. Every couple of months, we change teams, and that certainly keeps things exciting! My first project involved developing machine learning tools to help with the early detection of cancer. I’m now working to improve healthcare in prisons.
Theextracurricular side of TPP is great. I enjoy playing the guitar, and TPP actually has a free guitar lesson once a week, which I go to, and it’s been really useful. ♦
Moji – Software Developer
Crossword
Across
5. Forerunner to NASA
7. What do mathematicians call an angle having more than 180 degrees but less than 360
8. Crystal face
10. Luminous atmospheric phenomenon
11. Integrate data onto a carrier wave
12. Impurity in a semiconductor
14. Unintended frequency product from a mixer
15. Semiconductor device type (abbr.)
16. Mr. Gauss' first name
18. Reduced in amplitude
19. Unit of magnetic flux
22. Vacuum tube type for a high power, high frequency transmitter
24. Unit of processor calculation speed, abbr.
26. A disk operation
27. Part of a gyroscope that facilitates free movement of the reference sphere (pl.)
28. Mate to a bolt (pl.)
Down
1. _____-Carlo analysis
2. Added an attenuator
3. Brightest star in the Aquila constellation
4. An ellipse has two of them
6. Surfaces
9. Type of current
13. Polymer having the elastic properties of natural rubber
14. International phonetic alphabet letter 'S'
15. Imperfections in a crystal lattice
17. Modulation type (abbr.)
20. A line on a map which joins points of equal pressure
21. Enclosure for electronics system or assembly
23. Last statement in a BASIC routine
25. Metal or plastic rod that connects a potentiometer wiper to a knob (pl.)